Oklahoma State Cowboys wrestling

Oklahoma State Cowboys
University	Oklahoma State University
Head Coach	John Smith (16th season)
Conference	Big 12 Conference
Location	Stillwater, OK
Arena	Gallagher-Iba Arena (Capacity: 13,611)
Nickname	Cowboys
Colors	Orange and black
National championship years
Conference Tournament championships

The Oklahoma State Cowboys wrestling team is a NCAA Division I wrestling program and is one of four Big 12 Conference schools that participates in wrestling. Since the team's first season in 1914–15, it has won thirty-four team national championships (three of which are unofficial), 134 individual NCAA championships, and 213 wrestlers have earned 425 All-American honors. The Cowboys won the first official NCAA Division I Wrestling Team Championship in 1929. The Cowboys have won 47 conference team championships and 234 individual conference titles. The program owns an all-time dual meet record of 1021-113-23. On January 28th 2011, OSU became the second school in NCAA history to record one thousand dual victories, joining Iowa State University.

History

Cowboy wrestling extends back to 1914–15 when A.M. Colville coached the school's first team. That team lost the school's first dual meet to Texas. The next season, legendary coach Edward C. Gallagher would take over the team. He coached the first national championship team in 1928. He was also the coach of eight of the first ten national champion teams as his teams won in 1928, 1929, 1930, 1934, 1935, 1937, 1938, 1939, and 1940. Only a strong 1936 Oklahoma team coached by Paul Keen kept him from sweeping the first 10 official NCAA Championships. He coached 50 official All-Americans and 26 official individual champions in the earliest days of the tournament. Following his death in 1940, the school had to find a coach who could continue their winning tradition.

The man chosen to replace Edward C. Gallagher was Art Griffith. Art Griffith was the coach for Central High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma before succeeding Gallagher. In his 15 years there, he won 94 of 100 matches, including 50 in a row at one point. Because of this experience, he was selected to be the new Oklahoma State head coach. It ended up being a good choice, as he won 8 NCAA Championships in his 13 seasons there and continued two streaks left by Gallagher. First, he extended the four consecutive championships Gallagher had left with to 7, finally losing out in 1947 to Cornell College. Second, he extended the 27 consecutive dual meet victory streak to 76, before finally losing in 1951. Griffith's wrestlers won 27 individual championships and were All-Americans 64 times from 1941–1956. He retired on top after winning three consecutive NCAA Championships and going 78-7-4 for his career, including ten undefeated teams.

One of Griffith's wrestlers, Myron Roderick, was chosen to immediately succeed his former coach following his retirement in 1956. As a wrestler for Griffith, Roderick went 42–2 and was a 3 time national champion from 1954–1956. After he returned from the 1956 Olympics, he took over as head coach. His first team was one of his least successful, finishing fourth at nationals with only one champion and 3 All-Americans to his credit. However, his 1957–58 and 1958–59 teams dominated the NCAA tournament, winning in convincing fashion with four champions and 15 All-Americans between the two years. His 1960 team couldn't compete with a much stronger Oklahoma team coached by Thomas Evans. However, Roderick's teams once again rebounded with championships in 1961 and 1962, winning 5 individual championships and another 15 All-Americans. By the end of his career in 1969, he had coached 7 team champions, 20 individual champions, and 79 All-Americans.

The dual success continued – but the national titles ran dry – into the 1970s and 80s, with Tommy Chesbro leading the way. The sudden rise of Iowa wrestling under Dan Gable shut off the NCAA title train, as the Cowboys won only one title under Chesbro’s watch. He was the coach from 1969–84 and his dual mark of 227-26-0 was the best record in the history of the program until it was passed recently by current coach John Smith.

Smith has recently re-established the dominance of OSU over the rest of the wrestling world by winning four straight national championships (2003–06). Smith took over the Cowboy wrestling program in 1991 in the wake of NCAA sanctions and probation leftover from previous head coach Joe Seay who had won two national titles with a 114-18-2 overall record. Smith’s first season saw the Cowboys take second at Nationals, but his second season was crippled by the probation. The Pokes went 4–7 and were banned from post-season competition. But the next season, the Cowboys were back as top wrestlers who had taken a redshirt year during the probation (such as four-time champion, and current assistant coach Pat Smith and Alan Fried) were back on the mat. OSU went 13–1 that year and won the team title.

The middle part of the 90s, however, saw the OSU program grow somewhat stagnant. Wrestlers were still winning individual titles and claiming All-American honors and the team was still winning Big Eight and Big 12 Conference crowns, but their showings at Nationals were disappointing. Between 1995–2002, the Cowboys placed no better than second (once, in 1997) and finished third three times (1998, 1999, 2001). But in 2002, the Cowboys were back in the saddle once again, winning the conference and NCAA titles and sporting a 17–0 record. Including that championship season up through 2005, OSU sported a combined record of 55–2. Smith currently has 239 wins as coach at OSU, the most ever in school history.

Post graduate alum careers

Oklahoma State has a history of alumni wrestlers and top UFC contenders throughout the years. Like current UFC Middleweight contender Mark Munoz, the UFC Light-Heavyweight Champion Daniel Cormier, former UFC Welterweight Champion and current contender Johny Hendricks, and 2x former UFC Champion and UFC Hall of Fame member Randy Couture. 2 decorated collegiate wrestlers in the Rosholt brothers currently compete in Mixed Martial Arts are Jake Rosholt (3x NCAA Champion: '03, '05, & '06) and Jared Rosholt (2010 NCAA Finalist) as well as former UFC fighter Don Frye and Bellator fighter and former Strikeforce Champion Muhammed Lawal. Shane Roller retired from MMA in 2012 having earned NCAA All-American honors with the Cowboy Wrestling team, and then becoming an assistant coach with the program gaining 3 NCAA team titles.

Home meets

Main article: Gallagher-Iba Arena

Home meets are held in the 13,611 seat Gallagher-Iba Arena in Stillwater. The arena is named in part after Oklahoma State's legendary wrestling coach Edward C. Gallagher. Gallagher-Iba was known as Gallagher Hall for nearly five decades until the name was amended to honor former Oklahoma State basketball coach Henry Iba upon the facility's first renovation during the 1987–1988 season. Oklahoma State has held their home wrestling meets in the arena since its completion in 1938. The arena was formally dedicated on February 3, 1939 during a wrestling dual versus Indiana. During the December 9, 2005 Bedlam wrestling dual, a permanently reserved seat for Gallagher was unveiled, adjacent to a reserved seat for Iba.

Gallagher-Iba underwent a massive renovation project in 2000 and 2001, which included an expansion of the seating capacity from 6,381 to the present 13,611. While the expansion project caused attendance at basketball games to almost double, the wrestling crowds have yet to pack the arena to the rafters as they did in the original Gallagher Hall. However, attendance usually spikes when rivals come to Stillwater, most notably the Iowa Hawkeyes, Minnesota Golden Gophers, and Bedlam foe Oklahoma. While the unruly atmosphere has been somewhat diminished, the renovation project has yielded positives for the Cowboy wrestling program. Among which are the new wrestling center and other new training facilities built inside the athletics center, much to the benefit all OSU student-athletes.

The venerable arena has long played a part in the history and legends of the OSU wrestling program. During the 1978 Big 8 wrestling championships, a standing-room-only crowd of 8,300 made such a huge roar that many of the lights in the arena burst. Gallagher-Iba has also seen many long undefeated streaks for the Pokes, including 34 unbeaten and untied seasons at home. The home mat advantage for the Pokes and the ferocious attitude of the thousands of OSU fans packed in the original 6,381-seat bandbox led to the arena's nickname "Gallagher's House of Horrors."

Bedlam

Main article: Bedlam Series

Despite the overwhelming mainstream popularity of the games played on the gridiron and hardwood, the Bedlam Series roots lie on the wrestling mat. In fact, the term 'Bedlam' used to describe this intrastate rivalry has its roots based in the rivalry that brewed between the schools' prestigious wrestling programs. The term is said to have been born on the night of a particularly heated wrestling dual in Stillwater at Gallagher Hall. A newspaper writer was said to have emerged from the building exclaiming to others outside, "It's bedlam in there!"

Oklahoma State holds a seemingly insurmountable advantage in the wrestling series, which began in 1920. The Cowboys own an impressive 126-26-10 record against the Sooners through the 2009–10 season. While normally this sort of one-sided advantage can be attributed to one school being rather weak, the Bedlam domination by Oklahoma State is very different in that Oklahoma actually has one of the historically strongest wrestling programs in America. This dominance over such a highly touted rival has long been a source of great pride for Oklahoma State fans. In recent years, Bedlam wrestling duals in Norman have been moved out of the Lloyd Noble Center to the considerably smaller McCasland Field House so as to prevent Cowboy fans from dominating the atmosphere despite being the visiting team.

Both programs have been very successful on the national level, Oklahoma winning seven team national championships in its history, while Oklahoma State's highly decorated wrestling program has amassed a record thirty-four team national titles.

Awards

Dan Hodge Trophy

• 2005 – Steve Mocco
• 2016 – Alex Dieringer

See also

• National Wrestling Hall of Fame and Museum

External links

• Official website